“Almost as if you can’t trust anyone these days, eh? You should’ve stabbed me in the heart, Faithful, instead of the guts.”

“Heart?” he sneered. “You don’t have one!” He floundered through the water at her, sending up a shower of glittering spray, dagger in his fist. She thrust at him, felt the spear’s shaft jolt in her aching right hand as the point took him in the hip, twisted him round and sent him over backwards. He struggled up again, snarling through his gritted teeth. “I’m better’n you at least, you murdering scum!”

“If you’re so much better than me, how come you’re the one in the stream and I’m the one with the spear, fucker?” She moved the point in slow circles, shining with wet. “You keep on coming, Carpi, I’ll give you that. No one could call you a coward. Just a fucking liar. Traitor Carpi.”

“Me a traitor?” He dragged himself down the wall towards the slowly clattering waterwheel. “Me? After all those years I stuck with you? I wanted to be loyal to Cosca! I was loyal to him. I’m Faithful!” He thumped his wet breastplate with his bloody hand. “That’s what I am. What I was. You stole that from me! You and your fucking brother!”

“I didn’t throw Cosca down a mountain, bastard!”

“You think I wanted to do it? You think I wanted any of this?” There were tears in the old mercenary’s eyes as he struggled away from her. “I’m not made to lead! Ario comes to me, says Orso’s decided you can’t be trusted! That you have to go! That you’re the past and I’m the future, and the rest of the captains already agreed. So I took the easy way. What was my choice?”

Monza wasn’t enjoying herself anymore. She remembered Orso standing smiling in her tent. Cosca is the past, and I have decided that you are the future. Benna smiling beside him. It’s better like this. You deserve to lead. She remembered taking the easy way. What had been her choice? “You could’ve warned me, given me a chance to—”

“Like you warned Cosca? Like you warned me? Fuck yourself, Murcatto! You pointed out the path and I followed, that’s all! You sow bloody seeds, you’ll reap a bloody harvest, and you sowed seeds across Styria and back! You did this to yourself! You did this to—Gah!” He twisted backwards, fumbling weakly at his neck. That fine cloak of his had floated back and got all caught up in the gears of the waterwheel. Now the red cloth was winding tighter and tighter, dragging him hard against the slowly turning wood.

“Fucking…” He fumbled with his one half-good arm at the mossy slats, at the rusted bolts of the great wheel, but there was no stopping it. Monza watched, mouth half-open but no words to say, spear hanging slack from her hands as he was dragged down, down under the wheel. Down, down, into the black water. It surged and bubbled around his chest, then around his shoulders, then around his neck.